The exemplary embodiment relates to motivation of performance improvement and finds particular application in connection with a system and method for raising performance among agents working in a common environment, such as a call center.
Call centers are often high pressure work environments where agents typically work according to shifts and time schedules, in cubicles situated in large open spaces while receiving calls assigned to them one after another. Agents are usually grouped into teams to which supervisors are assigned and from whom they receive periodic feedback on their performance. Measures on current call center activities, such as the current queue length, may be displayed in the work environment. However, the rigid reporting structure holds agents to account for their own individual performance alone and any activity-based compensation mechanisms for agents reflect their individual performance but not that of the call center's operations as a whole. It is a challenge to maintain high motivation and performance amongst the agents in this environment. This may be attributed to any of a number of factors, such as a lack of community feeling, poor on-going feedback on individual performance, an absence of reward for mutual support, assistance and knowledge sharing, and a lack of transparency and clarity of career progression possibilities.
Information management systems may provide agents with access to switch data, which shows how long an agent has been on a call. However, the performance trends of specific agents or teams are not provided. The creation of reports aggregating the data would likely be too time-consuming for supervisors, and any reports generated would tend to focus on specific organizational processes, such as reporting on the call center's overall performance or the content of coaching sessions with individual agents. Observational studies in call centers suggest that supervisors and operations managers in call centers are skilled at providing agents with valuable feedback on their performance metrics in their weekly one-to-one coaching sessions. While supervisors would like to have more one-on-one time with their agents, there is a limit to how much time a supervisor can spend, in practice, with any one of his or her agents in the course of a week, and to the time the call center can afford to pull agents out of production time (i.e., taking phone calls) to receive coaching. The net result is that agents receive feedback on their individual and team performance only periodically.
Various methods have been proposed for increasing workers' interest in a given task by adding elements of a game to the task. For example, elements of competition, direct reward, team-supported learning and play around the execution of real work activities have been proposed for use in training environments. More recently, this approach has been also proposed for the support of routine on-going work, rather than simply for specific learning activities. See, for example, Reeves, B., and Read, J. L., “Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete,” Harvard Business Press (2009), for a review of such methods. Some of the methods proposed in this book include: a supervisor checking the team's progress; casting call center metrics as points, ranks, and virtual currency; and making data about the team available for other members to review.
Others have suggested games that are intended to motivate performance but which are implemented outside the working system. Some of these games establish a virtual currency which is used to purchase virtual goods. A player can be credited or debited virtual goods based on the outcome of events in games. These types of game, if applied to a call center environment, may, however, lead to worker distraction rather than raising performance.
There remains a need for a method and system for visualizing performance information which can lead to improvements in performance in a workplace and an increase in worker job satisfaction.